This fall brings Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them to theaters, expanding the wizarding world that J.K. Rowling created, complete with a screenplay written by the novel’s author herself. The most recent trailer finally laid out the basic premise of the story for us with some magical creatures escaping from Newt Scamander’s suitcase, leaving the wizard with the task of tracking them down before they wreak havoc on the non-magical world and reveal the wizarding community.

If you’re wondering what some of these magical creatures are in the aforementioned most recent trailer, Warner Bros. has revealed the names and a few details on them. One of them is even the symbol of one of the Ilvermorny wizarding school, the American equivalent of Hogwarts. Find out about the Fantastic Beasts magical creatures after the jump. Read More »

We won’t see Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them for another few months, but Warner Bros. is already planning its next trip to the wizarding world. The studio has just set a 2018 release date for the next film in the Harry Potter spinoff/prequel series, which will once again be directed by David Yates from a script by J.K. Rowling. Read More »

Last night, midnight madness returned to book stores as the script for the stage production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was made available as a book for readers to soak up as a makeshift eighth installment of the Harry Potter book series. Even though this is a much different piece of writing than Potter fans are used to reading, they still turned out in droves to find out what happens to The Boy Who Lived now that he’s a 37-year old father of three children and an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic.

With all this interest in Harry Potter emerging again, despite the fact that this isn’t a traditional addition to the stories of the wizarding world, can we expect the story of Hogwarts most famous student to continue? Unfortunately, author J.K. Rowling says that with the release of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child this weekend, “Harry is done now.” Find out what else the author had to say after the jump. Read More »

We’re still a little under five months away from seeing how the Harry Potter cinematic universe expands with Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The spin-off takes place about 80 years before the events of the Harry Potter film franchise, but this time over in the wizarding world of the United States. From the beginning, the film was said to be the beginning of a hopeful trilogy, and now we have further confirmation that’s still the plan. Read More »

This fall will bring the first in a hopeful new series of Harry Potter spin-off films with Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. It also marks the first time J.K. Rowling has written a screenplay adapting her own wizarding world for the big screen. And that’s enough for publishing companies Little, Brown & Company and Scholastic to package the script as a book for fans to add to their shelves alongside the rest of their Harry Potter books.

Find out when you can get the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them screenplay book after the jump. Read More »

I’m not shy about my love for the Harry Potter books and their film adaptations, which is why Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Themmade my list of most anticipated films of 2016. I’m excited to explore another corner of J.K. Rowling‘s wizarding world. I’m glad that director David Yates is back. I’m very curious to see how Rowling herself fares in her screenwriting debut. So naturally, I had to go through the new trailer frame-by-frame and collect my thoughts and observations on this still-mysterious movie.

Story details that have already been revealed and idle speculation lurk below, so proceed with caution.

According to the new Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them trailer, we are all invited by J.K. Rowling to go back to the wizarding world of Harry Potter. But this time we’re on the other side of the pond, in New York, in 1926, following wizard Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) as he enters the Big Apple with a mysterious suitcase of magical creatures. We don’t get to see much of any of the fantastic beasts that the title indicates, or where they were found, but this does look like the right way to spin-off the Harry Potter franchise.

Watch the new Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them trailer after the jump. Read More »

The basic storytelling in J.K. Rowling‘s Harry Potter novels is good stuff, a fairly typical “hero’s journey” tale told with wit and verve. However, Mr. Potter is not the main reason these books (and their film adaptations) are so incredibly popular – readers and viewers all over the world fell in love with the world he inhabits. Rowling’s wizarding world is so rich with detail and so impeccably imagined that you feel like you can somehow pay it a visit yourself. It feels real in a way that so many fantasy worlds do not.

With the upcoming Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them looking to shine a light on a very different time and place in Rowling’s wizarding world, a new series of stories paving the way for this film have been announced. “The History of Magic in North America” will bring readers across the pond to take a deep dive into the American magical world, effectively setting the stage for the 1920s New York City seen in the new movie.

J.K. Rowling‘s original Harry Potter book series ended in 2007, and the Harry Potter film series followed not too long after in 2011. But the Harry Potter franchise is as robust and productive as ever. In fact, 2016 is already shaping up to be a huge year for Potterheads. Not only do we have a spinoff movie, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, coming this fall, we’ve also got the imminent opening of Universal Studios’ The Wizarding World of Harry Potter this spring and the West End debut of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child this summer.

Of course, all that magic tends to add up. And if your Gringotts vault isn’t exactly overflowing with Galleons, you’ll make sure you want to spend your money wisely. So today, we’ve got a closer look at the new Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park, and some news about the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child book due to hit shelves. Yes, you read that right: we’re getting an eighth Harry Potter book. Read More »

Last year, a teaser trailer for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them introduced us to the American magical world that we’ll see on the big screen this fall. Now a new featurette on the film shows off even more of the Harry Potter spin-off, including our new adult main characters played by Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Dan Fogler and Alison Sudol. However, we don’t find out much more about Colin Farrell here. Still, it’s a cool glimpse behind the scenes of the wizarding adventure that takes place in New York City in 1926. Watch the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them featurette below! Read More »